Good for the Grades
by Sakon76
Summary: 2007 movie. Sometimes learning about an alien culture means taking a closer look at your own.


_Things are going great, and they're only getting better.  
I'm doing all right, getting good grades.  
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades._ -- Timbuk 3

**Good for the Grades**  
by K. Stonham  
released 5th February 2008

One of the perks about hanging around with giant robots from another planet, Sam was slowly discovering, was the fact that his grades had been going solidly up ever since he met the Autobots. Not that they'd been _bad_ before, exactly... he'd been solidly in the B-minus to B range. Now, though, he was solidly in the A-minus to As. Part of it was his parents' ongoing threat about not being allowed to hang out with Bumblebee and the others unless he kept his grades up, and _boy_ did that have more weight than threats to time with Miles or cutting back his curfew or allowance. The rest of it, though...

The Internet, apparently, was great for vocabulary and syntax and _facts_ (or, in some cases, incorrect facts). What it _wasn't_ so good at, the Autobots had discovered, was _context_.

Which led to their native contacts having to explain a lot of things to them. Which led to Sam and Mikaela's grades both going up as they had to stop and think about things themselves. Sam's paper on how Earth's axial tilt led to seasonal migration among hunter-gatherers, the continuing cultural influence of the yearly death of winter and rebirth of spring, and how modern religion had adapted that into gifts from Father Christmas and rabbits laying multi-colored chocolate eggs in April, had gotten him an A in his history class. Algebra became more useful when you got to use it to help plan out a base's layout and construction, and pre-calc and chemistry began to show their values when Mikaela started using them under Ratchet's instruction to fabricate parts.

"Draconian," Sam muttered, staring at the SAT flashcard. "Um, harsh?" he asked, looking up at his study partner.

Bumblebee nodded. "From the Latin 'draco,' meaning 'dragon.' Commonly associated with the policies of Vlad the Impaler."

"Vlad... Dracula?" Sam asked rhetorically. "What do dragons have to do with vampires? At least it's not from Harry Potter." Bumblebee laughed and Sam slipped the 3x5 to the back of the stack. "Brobdingnagian?" he muttered, leaning back against Bumblebee's foot arch. "I know this one..."

"The term originates from a book called 'Gulliver's Travels'," Bumblebee prompted him.

Sam furrowed his brow in thought. He'd read the book in sophomore year, European Lit. class. It really hadn't left an impression beyond Miles' cracks about Munchkins...

Munchkins. Lilliputians.

Sam looked up at Bumblebee's glowing blue eyes. "Really really big," he said quietly, an observation and an answer both.

"Correct," Bumblebee told him, and Sam couldn't tell by the tone of his voice whether or not his alien friend was drawing the same conclusions that he was. He remembered how Mrs. Townsend had gone on and on about Lilliput being European politics viewed from a distance, while Brobdingnag had been the same arena viewed from close up, and how either way the issues of the day had seemed ridiculous. He wondered if that was how the Autobots viewed Earth's politics, or if their own had been the same way. Maybe both.

He wondered what it was like to be like Gulliver, living on a planet of tiny humans who didn't even reach up to your knee... or, in Optimus' case, who barely stood as tall as your ankle...

"Sam?" Bumblebee asked.

He shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "Just thinking. Next card: hubris." He pursed his mouth for a minute, thinking. "Pride before a fall," he finally said. "Greek, I think. Greek gods, anyway."

"Megatron," Bumblebee said softly. Sam looked back up at him, surprised. The not-a-Camaro tilted his head slightly in a way that indicated mild amusement. "He was proud and brought low by one he despised. That would be hubris, I believe."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, nodding. "Like... David and Goliath. Or Jack and the Beanstalk." He remembered Megatron's voice booming after him, echoing: "_I smell you, boy!_"

"Fee fie fo fum," Sam muttered mirthlessly. Then he smirked. "Megatron held by Sector Seven, like Gulliver tied up by the Lilliputians."

A breath of mechanical laughter. "Scorponok, in the desert, with a plasma cannon?" Bumblebee asked in response to his phrasing. The Autobots had been introduced to the wonders of a weekly game night by Sergeant Epps, who had three daughters the right age for them, and Clue had been among the board games upsized for human and Cybertronian players alike. Chutes and Ladders, interestingly, had been the first game in the stack to apparently have a Cybertronian equivalent. Sam still wasn't sure quite why.

"He's toast once Lennox's team gets in range of him," Sam agreed, and shuffled a new card to the front. "Lebensraum..."


End file.
